It Just Takes Longer

That’s what everyone told us during all of our trainings. It just takes longer to live in Africa. I tried to process that, I tried to imagine it, I thought I had an understanding. I did not. I think it’s sort of like having your first baby. You can read all the books, take all the classes, babysit for a friend, etc. But, until you have that baby in your home and have lived a few of those sleepless nights, you cannot understand.

It’s true though. It just takes longer to live here. For example, often we are without power. So, when the power has been out for a while and we need to use the generator to keep the fridge cold, we go into our pantry, flip this lever to switch the current from city power to generator, turn off the hot water heater, go outside and turn the generator on. Then, at 10 o’clock each night, when it’s time to turn the generator off, we have to go outside, turn the generator off, remember to flip the lever back to city power, in case it comes on during the night, and then flip the hot water heater back on in the hopes that we’ll have hot water the next day. That’s just to keep the fridge cold.

I’ve been shopping the last two days. Two different ladies have graciously taken me around town to show me some of their favorite stores and stands. Just figuring out how to make foods that are familiar using the ingredients that are available to me at a reasonable cost will be a challenge. But, I look forward to figuring it out. Each store has a small selection of foods, many of them about the stock of your average 7-11. At this point, I’ve been to all 3 of the “large” grocery stores and there is nothing back home that I can think of to compare them to. Maybe a country general store. Maybe not. Okay, no comparisons.

The packaging for everything is so different. Like, I never would have thought that the mound of black trash bags full of powder was flour. Fortunately, my colleague explained to me that I need to freeze it and then sift it before I use it to get all of the bugs out of it. I haven’t had to use it yet, but we’ll see!

Today, I bought hangers from 3 different stands, because I kept thinking that the next stall might have a more reasonable price. Then, when I brought them home, they had to be washed and dried before they could be used. When I started using them, I realized that I didn’t buy nearly enough so now I’ll get to brave the market again to find more of them.

I did buy some strawberries. When I got home, I had to run a sink full of this cleaning solution to soak the strawberries in for 20 minutes before they could be eaten.

Water. That takes longer too. Fortunately, we were given a nice water filter through the WMU program that Southern Baptists run. So, each morning, we pour water in the top and then it trickles through the filter into the reservoir. Then, we can use it to make our kool-aid, milk (it’s powdered here), and ice (which we haven’t actually had yet because the freezer has yet to get cold enough). Before we brush our teeth, we have to make sure that there is bottled water in the bathroom for us to brush with. When the filter gets dirty, we’ll just scour off the crud and use it again.

Laundry is fun too. We have a washer that someone blessed us with until our crate gets here. So, when we have city power, that works great. We don’t have a dryer, so we can hang the clothes out to dry. But, if we do that, then they have to be ironed or put into a hot dryer long enough to kill the mango fly larva, or else we’ll get a mango worm growing in our skin. Since we don’t have a dryer and I am not about to iron everything, we’ve chosen to live like Sanford and Son with clothes hanging all over the house. We’re going to get a better system soon, I hope.

It just takes longer. That’s all there is to it. It could be maddening. Truly! But we’re choosing to look at it as an adventure. We can already see so many ways that all of these inconveniences can help us to live in greater community with other folks. It also helps us to be grateful for the little things. I have not picked up my to-do list pad one time since we got here and even with all of the craziness of learning how to operate in this new nomal, I’m enjoying learning new skills and processes. Mostly.

Here is a picture of our side entrance as we found it when we arrived, covered in garland and balloons. Our luggage was piled up on the carport.

Another example of something that takes longer. While trying to rearrange the furniture in Abby's room, we encountered a nest of termites living under a bookshelf. Here is a photo of Ryan holding up all of the termites he swept up using that Nigerian broom you see in his hand. You can only imagine what kind of squalling was going on in that room as we were killing and stomping on that heap of bugs!